Sunday, November 16, 2003

Partisan salvos are being fired across the country, while divisions in America’s oldest political party strain its cohesion. As the national opposition party during most of the past three decades, the Democrats’ liberal catechism has drifted further and further from its earlier majoritarian base.

Although Jimmy Carter won a single term as president following Watergate, the only truly successful recent Democrat has been Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton broke from liberal orthodoxy to campaign and govern from the political center from 1993 to 2001. His vice president, Al Gore, was nominated to succeed him, but campaigned to the left, and lost.

These are not ordinary times. The nation is, and has been since September 11, at war. There was a clear consensus to conduct a military operation in Afghanistan to punish the perpetrators of the attack against the United States. A worldwide contagion of terrorism continued, and military action was conducted in Iraq. As in Afghanistan, the military campaign went very well and quickly, and compared to previous American military actions since 1917, the casualties were limited. Because the terrorist enemy is a transnational outlaw force, however, the postmilitary occupations have been problematic, casualties have continued and public support has become somewhat ambivalent.

Throughout this same period, the American economy has been in a moderate recession with relatively severe unemployment. Just as President Clinton inherited a nascent recovering economy in 1993, President Bush inherited an exhausted bubble economy sinking into a much-needed correction. The economic woes of the country, however, seemed subordinated to the international crisis facing the country in the first three years of the Bush administration, and the president’s popularity, mostly due to his role as commander in chief, soared. By mid-2003, however, the Democrats sensed that the problems in Iraq, together with the still-ailing economy, had made the president vulnerable. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean not only had opposed action in Iraq from the outset, but he adopted the class-warfare rhetoric of the populist left. With innovative use of the Internet, Mr. Dean rose from obscurity and took the lead among his rivals.

The Democratic Party is composed of three general groups — the populist left, the liberals and the centrists. All three groups were furious about the 2000 presidential election and share an intense hatred for Mr. Bush. But some of the liberals and most of the centrists do not share the antibusiness and isolationist views of the liberal party base. The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), have been at the center of new thinking in the party, and were the source of many of Mr. Clinton’s policy ideas inthe1990s.These moderates and centrists have little common ground with the party’s populists. Having urged military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq before Mr. Bush took action, these centrist Democrats find the isolationists defeatist and unacceptable. It is hard to imagine how these groups within the Democratic Party can coexist when the party holds its convention in Boston next July. The DLC, Sens. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Evan Bayh of Indiana and other moderates have already put forward a new Democratic foreignpolicycalled progressive internationalism, a third way between the left isolationists and the Bush pre-emptivists. Whether or not it is a better doctrine than Mr. Bush’s, it is clearly a confrontation with the Democratic left.

The New York Times recently reported in a front-page story that Democratic strategists have concluded that current economic arguments against the Bush administration may seem weak next year, when the economy may be recovering and unemployment falling. A shift to attack the administration on its performance in Iraq, some strategists are reported to have decided, is now necessary.

However unhappy many Americans are at the continued casualties in Iraq and the temporary inability to contain guerrilla terrorists, there is no evidence yet that Americans are willing to pull out of Iraq, conceding our dead and wounded have been spent for nothing. This would invite terrorists to renew their assault on the world’s democracies.

Furthermore, there remain many Democrats who strongly support the American actions abroad, and the goals of defeating terrorism now before it regroups and strikes again. In recent weeks, DLC leaders and other Democrats have advocated new party approaches to gun control, abortion and reaching out to Americans of religious faith. Seventeen Democratic senators voted for the bill outlawing partial-birth abortion. Retiring Democratic Sen. Zell Miller has just published a serious book damning his party’s off-center public policies.

The three groups in the Democratic Party are polarizing now into two groups, and their takes on the world are fundamentally at odds. Perhaps one of the presidential candidates can yet resolve these differences and unite the party in and after Boston. If not, it’s going to get uglier than the mere incivility of the campaign rhetoric so far. As in 1860, the Democratic Party could split in two over deep national issues, and make the election result foregone. Watch out for large shipments of tea through Boston Harbor next July.______________________________________________________

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About Barry Casselman

BARRY CASSELMAN is an author, journalist and lecturer who has reported and analyzed American presidential and national politics since 1972.

He founded, edited and published his first newspaper when he was 29. He has been a contributor to many national publications, including The Weekly Standard, realclearpolitics.com, Politico, Roll Call, Washington Examiner, The American Interest, Utne Reader, Campaigns and Elections Magazine, American Experiment Quarterly, Washington Times, The Rothenberg Political Report, Business Today, Election Politics, Business Ethics Magazine, San Francisco Examiner, Washington Insider, and American Commonwealth.

His regular op ed columns and other commentary in print, and on the internet, are distributed through the Preludium News Service. His blog ‘The Prairie Editor” has an international readership and appears on his website at www.barrycasselman.com .

He was a political analyst for WCCO-AM (CBS) for several years, for KSJN-AM (Public Radio International), and for KUOM-AM (National Public Radio). He has also broadcast on RAE in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and beginning in 2000, he produced and broadcast for Voice of America. In 2006, he presented news commentary on LBC, the independent 24-hour news radio network in London, England. He also provided election night analysis in 2006 for Minnesota Public Radio. In 2008, he returned to WCCO-AM for periodic national election commentary. Beginning in 2011, he began weekly commentary on the 2012 presidential campaign on a national radio podcast program originating in Dallas, TX.

Casselman was the original host of “Talk To Your City” on the Minneapolis Television Network, and was a frequent political commentator for KTCA-TV (PBS). In 1992 and 1994, he presented election night analysis for the Conus coast-to-coast All News Channel. In 1996, he provided live coverage from the presidential primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire for All News Channel nationwide. He has also appeared on C-SPAN. In 2008, he was interviewed by ABC-TV Evening News with Charles Gibson.

He has covered national presidential primaries, caucuses and straw polls since 1976, and attended Democratic and Republican national conventions since 1988. He has traveled throughout the United States to report on significant political events, including the national congressional debate in Williamsburg in 1996, the presidential debates, national conventions and events of the Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee, United We Stand America, Reform Party, National Governors Association, NAACP, AFL-CIO, Christian Coalition, CPAC, Green Party and the Independence Party.

In 2012, he was invited to be a civilian participant in the 58th annual seminar on national security at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, PA. Also in 2012, he was a speaker at the Jefferson Educational Society's Global Summit IV. At that event, he received the Thomas Hagen "Dignitas" Award for lifetime achievement.

From 1990-2011, he was the executive director of the non-profit International Conference Foundation, and hosted more than 500 world leaders, foreign journalists and other international visitors. At the non-partisan Foundation, he also organized four national symposia: the first on low-income housing with then-HUD Secretary Jack Kemp; the second, a highly-acclaimed conference on “Locating the New Political Center in America” with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and leading spokespersons of the Clinton administration as well as newly-emerged independent groups; the third, a symposium on public communications with then-Governor Tom Ridge, former White House press secretary Mike McCurry, Tony Blankley and other national figures; and in 2003, a symposium on homeland security with Secretary Ridge and leading local and national experts. During this time, he also organized numerous smaller conferences, tours and events for the U.S. Information Agency and the U.S. Department of State for its International Visitor Program and its Foreign Press Center programs. In 2008, he organized a special program for international media and visitors attending the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The Foundation also sponsored programs presenting domestic and international authors and their books.

In 2007, Mr. Casselman helped create and plan the nationally-broadcast and podcast dialogue between former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich at the Cooper Union in New York City, and he continued to work on related debate and public policy discussion projects in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.

Mr. Casselman has been a lecturer on public policy at Princeton University’s annual international business conferences in New York, and its regional conferences in Chicago since 2005; He also has been a guest lecturer at George Washington University, Carleton College, The Chautauqua (NY) Institution, Gannon University, Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Santa Barbara City College, University of St. Thomas, Metropolitan State University, Augsburg College, University of Minnesota, Jefferson Educational Society, and on the international voyages of the Queen Elizabeth 2, Sagafjord, Vistafjord and Royal Viking Sun. He has made presentations on journalism and the arts at Carleton College, University of Minnesota, College of St. Catherine, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Walker Art Center, Metropolitan State University, Mercyhurst College and the Brazilian Writers Union in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

His non-fiction book North Star Rising was published in 2007 by Pogo Press, an imprint of Finney Company. In 2008, Pogo Press published Minnesota Souvenir, Casselman’s history and visitor guide for the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul. He was editor and co-author of the book Taking Turns: Political Stalemate or a New Direction in the Race for 2012, a preview of that year's national election.

He has been cited in Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics and in William Safire’s Political Dictionary. Casselman has invented a number of political words and phrases which are now in frequent usage, and listed in various online dictionaries.

He is also a widely-published American poet, short story writer and playwright whose work has been translated and published in Europe, South America and Asia. He is the author of four published books of literary prose and poetry. His work has been frequently anthologized. Two of his plays, in collaboration with composer Randall Davidson, have been performed by the Actors Theater of St. Paul, Minnesota Orchestra, St. Donat’s Ensemble of Wales, and by independent productions at the Union Depot in St. Paul and the Foss Theater at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. He has provided original texts for two award-winning experimental films, as well as texts for other independent short films and videos.

Barry Casselman was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He received his B.A. with major honors from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. at the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. He has also studied in Paris, and attended the University of Madrid. He now lives in Minneapolis.